“Prince Charming on his white horse, fancy another round tonight?”
May 2002, the lawn behind the festival grounds. Beer cans rolling, the air thick with the haze of alcohol. Park Jun-o popped a can and shouted:
“Hey, hyungs, look at that chick. I messed around with her last year and she’s still into me—crazy bitch, right?” More than ten people laughed. The soju bottle in my hand trembled. Plastic chairs scraped the ground, beer foam spilled, someone’s phone clicked. Park Jun-o folded his arms and glanced at me. His eyes said: You’ll hold out, then end up laughing anyway. I didn’t laugh. That made it funnier. Someone raised a phone and flashed. Every burst of light took another snapshot of that night.
Why So Serious?
What did they really want—laughter, or my reaction? The fear rising in my pupils, my face twisting, the breath-stopping tension. The joke wasn’t a joke. It was quiet murder—by voice, by laughter, by the single word “kidding.” When they laughed, what actually moved was terror. Terror of being next. They laughed only because it wasn’t them. Every shrug of their shoulders made me swallow that night again.
Second Story: the joke you can’t erase with an eraser
2020, a video call. “Kim Seo-yeon, could you speak?” Team-leader Choi Young-jae said on screen. Same age as Park Jun-o. Same glint, same smile.
“Do you remember the presentation I gave on sexual-harassment training last year?” The room went still. “Yes, sir. I used something that happened to me personally—” Choi smiled and cut in. “Ah, that night? You were passionate. Still in touch with that senior?” Colleagues snickered on screen. Choi tilted his head; the corners of his eyes narrowed into a vicious curiosity. Still chained to that night, are we? Eighteen years later. I didn’t laugh. I acted fine.
The half-life of a joke
That night was radioactive.
- Year 1: “Come on, it was just a joke.”
- Year 5: “Still hung up on that?”
- Year 10: “Let it go already.”
- Year 22: “You still remember that?”
People said, “What’s the big deal?”
Yet that nothing lives and breathes inside me. Whenever someone laughs on the subway. Whenever a voice rises at an office dinner.
I’m still standing there. May 2002, the lawn soaked in alcohol.
Why am I still standing here?
I erased that night. Thought I had. But the words were carved into my body. That night, those words, that laughter. When someone laughs on the subway, I return. When a voice rises at an office dinner, I return. Twenty-two years on, I’m still standing in the same place. That night, those words, that laughter planted me here.
One last question
Right now, somewhere, someone is laughing. And somewhere, inside that laughter, someone has been dying for twenty-two years.
How much longer can you simply walk past that laughter—and that death?